photo provided by Hudson Library & Historical Society and Summit Memory / Akron-Summit County Public Library
By the 1920s, Hudson had largely bounced back from a terrible fire that devastated Main Street in 1892, demolishing numerous stores and businesses. Fortune came to town in 1907, with the return of James W. Ellsworth, a Hudson-born millionaire who made his money in the coal mining industry. He funded the planting of elm trees, the paving of streets, the reopening of the shuttered Western Reserve Academy and the creation of Hudson’s first water and sewer system. Main Street became a booming hub of business, home to restaurants and eateries such as Saywell’s drugstore, which operated a soda fountain, and Santschi’s Hudson Inn (pictured above). Today, many of Main Street’s historical buildings are still in use on its bustling strip. Stop into Open Door Coffee Co., housed in the former Saywell building, for a mocha blond latte passed over the original drugstore’s black Italian marble counter.
